Thursday, May 30, 2013

Michele Bachmann Leaving Congress; Michele Bachmann’s Greatest Hits; Crazy Sells; The Fox News Mole on Bill O’Reilly; Jan Brewer Actually Did Something Good; The Five Demands Obama Focus on the Scandals; John Boehner and the Lazy Shiftless President; MSNBC’s Ratings and Headline News; and much more. Brought to you by Bubble Genius, the BobCesca.com Amazon Link and the Bowen Law Group.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

So I see the screeching, ineffectual buffoons from Code Pink -- namely the group's founder, Medea Benjamin -- were at it again today.

In case you were lucky enough to miss it, this time Benjamin managed to somehow grab the spotlight away from her biggest target yet, heckling the President of the United States. Never mind that Barack Obama was holding a press conference whose sole purpose was to explain and clarify U.S. policy on the prosecution of war overseas and to push publicly again for the closure of Guantanamo, that of course wasn't good enough for Benjamin, because DRONES!

What I loved about this moment, though, is that Obama handled it with an almost staggering level of graciousness, certainly much more than Benjamin would've gotten from a president culled from the current crop of Republicans. He let her shriek, let her rant about the CIA and Muslim-killing, even deferred to her, and then calmly continued.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

I missed this yesterday, but there's no way I can let it go completely without mention.

The Doors have always been one of my favorite bands. They were something unique in music: darkness, mystery, hedonism, mythology, poetry, and an appreciation for Los Angeles as the edge of Western civilization in all its grotesque glory. Morrison of course died decades ago, but Doors co-founder Ray Manzarek succumbed to cancer on Sunday, taking with him the heart and spirit of one of the greatest rock'n'roll bands in history, but leaving behind plenty of great music.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

I've been out of the loop for the past few days because I've been spending some much-needed time with my daughter. With that in mind, I really do hate for my first mention of the devastating Oklahoma tornado to be something as seemingly petty as the response of a woman who doesn't believe in God to Wolf Blitzer's idiotic assumption that she does, but those are the breaks, I guess.

I think the reason I'm posting this and not feeling too bad about it is that this morning I listened to NPR do an interview with Republican Rep. Tom Cole -- who's from the town of Moore, Oklahoma, which was almost completely flattened by this F5 tornado -- and when asked what Americans can do to help, Cole answered, "Well, first and foremost, pray for us." Now don't get me wrong: Tom Cole sounds like a really decent guy and I have no doubt he had the best of intentions with his comment, but, really? First and foremost? That's what Americans should be doing to help people who've just had their lives utterly destroyed by what's occasionally known, ironically, as an act of God: Pray?

Maybe that's why I find the reaction of the woman in this interview so refreshing: because it proves that sometimes there actually are atheists in foxholes -- and there are almost always idiots behind cable news microphones.

Friday, May 17, 2013

This week: The IRS Scandal and Citizens United; John Boehner Demands Jail for Culprits, No Jail Time for Bush and Culprits of Iraq, Torture, Etc; The AP Phone Records Scandal and Watergate; Benghazi-Gate Continues; ABC News "Rocks" the Political World; CNN Discovers ABC News Report Was Seriously Flawed; Benghazi-Gate Screamers Don’t Know Where It’s Located; 935 False Statements About Iraq; and much more. Brought to you by Bubble Genius and the BobCesca.com Amazon Link.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

"I can’t be entirely indifferent to the shitty-ass, reach-around snark of some fellow who rushes to throw under the bus people about whom he has no knowledge whatsoever -- and does so to gain a dishonest point in a fucking tweet war."

-- David Simon on Bravo's Andy Cohen, who insinuated on Twitter that there may be something shady involved in the tax incentives Simon's show, Treme, is getting from the city of New Orleans

After awesomely proclaiming "fuck Twitter" and taking to his blog so that he could go into the necessary detail, Simon proceeded to verbally stomp Cohen for his snotty little passive-aggressive accusation. There are a lot of facts and figures and general financial wonkery to this story, but all you really need to know about the online back and forth -- which by the way also involves Anthony Bourdain, who's a regular writer for Treme -- is who the people involved are.

Andy Cohen is a sycophantic, self-aggrandizing asshole who shamefully carries himself like a gay minstrel show and whose network is responsible for more culturally toxic programming than almost any other on television. David Simon created The Wire. End of story.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Yesterday's column over at the Daily Banter took a look at a piece in Salon from last week that targeted Patton Oswalt. The problem, according to the author, is that Patton hasn't used his considerable forum and eloquent voice to speak out against the very serious problem of rape and "rape culture."

Here's an excerpt, and you may recognize some of it from a quickie post here on Saturday:

"Patton Oswalt didn’t do a damn thing wrong. He’s a comic. He believes in being funny. He believes in doing whatever’s necessary to ensure that he and other comics like him — male and female — continue to have the freedom to take chances when it comes to being funny, because humor is so subjective and, one more time, no one has the right to tell somebody else — or to dictate as the voice of an entire culture and for the alleged benefit of society as a whole — what is or isn’t funny, what can and can’t be poked fun at as long as there’s no genuine malice intended. Patton’s history as a comic is one of brilliance, insight, and, yes, a lack of malice toward anyone; what Molly Knefel did to him was cheap and unfair and the only person it should make look bad is her. Maybe her intentions were pure, but as she so piously lectures Patton on, intentions mean shit."

Since being posted yesterday morning, the piece I wrote has picked up quite a bit of steam, mostly due to Patton Oswalt thanking me for it via Twitter. That of course brought out a lot of very angry women and men who took me to task for what they believe is my insulting and condescending tone and, well, my "just not getting it." Once something takes off, you tend to go back and reread it and try to see it through someone else's eyes, particularly the eyes of those having a problem with it. I did that. And I stand by what I wrote and the overall point I was trying to make.

That said, there is something in the column that I want to apologize for. While I may think that what comedian and writer Molly Knefel said was wrong in the sense that she was blaming Patton Oswalt for something he didn't do and was under no obligation to do -- and I'm sorry, but the "if you're not part of the solution" argument is just ridiculous since you could make that claim pertain to anything -- it was wrong of me to refer to her as a "small-time" and "quasi-professional" comic. It truly did sound petty, condescending and insulting and that wasn't my conscious intention. I don't think Molly's heart was in the wrong place and I believe she was trying to be respectful to Patton even if her overall goal of dragging him into a fight that she personally deemed should be his was more than a little questionable. I'm sorry if I personally belittled Molly Knefel; I shouldn't have.

Again, it's a damn shame that I have to say this since it shouldn't need to be said, but I'm pro-women and stand against rape unequivocally -- no hedging, no excuses, no "legitimate or illegitimate," none of it. Rape is a despicable wrong, full stop. There are rotten men working in our government right now trying to either chip away at women's rights or swing a wrecking ball at them, and I suppose that's why, in my view anyway, there are far bigger and more important battles to fight on the subject of women's sexual sovereignty and authority than raising hell over a bad joke made by a comedian or, certainly, the lack of a soapbox stand by a comic who's proven time and time again that he's a good guy and someone who espouses liberal politics in the best possible sense of the term. No, by saying this I'm not telling you what you can and can't get angry over or be offended by; I'm offering up an opinion, the same way you are, which has as much value -- or lack thereof -- as all those other opinions that people are free to shout into the ether.

The issue I've always had when it comes to call-out culture and the outrage "machine" that ramps up whenever someone finds himself or herself offended by something these days has been well-documented: Thanks to social media, indignation can now snowball until it becomes an avalanche, the resulting cacophony vastly disproportional to the original offense. Our furious quest for satisfaction can sometimes have unintended consequences and can take a toll far greater than any sane person should be hoping for. That's the danger of reacting to everything with the same level of outrage. And the way that a column that may have been written with good intentions and meant merely to start a conversation can spiral downward into a guy who didn't hurt anybody being accused of making jokes he never made and generally suppressing women through, at best, silence which a select group interprets as a tacit admission of guilt and, at worst, public displays of misogyny.

The overall fight may be a noble and necessary one, but Patton Oswalt was the wrong person to pick it with.

Thursday, May 09, 2013

For years now, Salon's stable of really silly female writers has been to me what Tom Friedman is to Matt Taibbi or what The Family Circus was to Timothy Olyphant's drug-dealer character in Go: an unhealthy obsession that I can't help but be transfixed by no matter how much it sucks. Yeah, I love my friend Mary Beth Williams and I typically enjoy Joan Walsh's stuff quite a bit, but dear God, the rest of it. You already know about Irin, and Katie, and Falguni -- and emeriti like Heather and Stephanie -- but only one name at Salon dares to take on a beat that I suppose I should enjoy -- and yet strangely never do -- almost exclusively, and that's Tracy Clark-Flory.

If you're unfamiliar with Clark-Flory's work, she writes about sex. And, yeah, that's pretty much it. She's got the sexually empowered New York City chick cliché down pat and she cranks out more click-bait than just about anybody else at Salon, whether it involves watching porn at work or just mining her own sexual exploits and experimentation for opportunities to tediously navel-gaze, if you're looking for a hipster-lit boner, Tracy's your girl.

Yesterday, Clark-Flory posted a short column over at Salon that takes issue with what she sees as the recent rash of jokes about gay love by "bro-medians." In other words, straight guys who, she figures, suddenly see it as okay to play homoeroticism for laughs because they do it without any ill-will or offense intended. What led her to write the piece? Two things that happened back-to-back: a sketch on Late Night from a couple of nights ago in which Jimmy Fallon and John Krasinski lip-synced songs to each other while getting a little too close for a couple of men who claim not to be gay, and then, the next day, the release of the new single and video from the Lonely Island.

The song, Spring Break Anthem, intercuts lyrics about -- and in the video, images of -- your standard debaucherous spring break douchebaggery with lines about meeting Mr. Right, then planning a wedding between two guys and eventually tying the knot. While the Fallon gag, like most of his stuff, really is pretty pedestrian -- it's harmless and good-hearted but the sight of two straight men gaying it up is in fact the joke -- Clark-Flory is completely missing the point of what the Lonely Island is up to.

Spring Break Anthem is a fucking brilliant piece of subversion. While you know from the minute you hear it that the intention of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, and Jorma Taccone is to mercilessly send up "bro" culture -- the hyper-masculine, ultra-sexist, and almost doubtlessly homophobic frat boy behavior that turns Lake Havasu into the world's biggest toilet every spring break -- you also know that the song would still be a huge hit with precisely the people it's making fun of. That's the meta joke we've all become used to: When parody is done well it's almost indistinguishable from whatever it's parodying; in this case, the very people the Lonely Island are mocking when they shout over an LMFAO-style beat "Who wanna do a shot?! WE DO! I'm gonna get fucked up! ME TOO!" would without question be singing right the fuck along when the track got cranked to 11 at the Hard Rock Vegas pool during the real spring break this year -- were it not for the fact that as the song goes on there are more and more lines like "Sex with a man! We'll be so happy, true love forever, two kids walking hand in hand! Promise to cherish, trust and respect him... marry a man!"

Obviously, by the time the song turns up at an actual, honest-to-God spring break event, everyone will know the joke and so you'll lose out on the glorious opportunity of watching the faces of the frat douches change from pumped, to confused, to probably horrified, but you've got to imagine that the average party school dickhead will have no idea what the hell to do with the lines about gay sex and marriage. And here's the thing: If by some chance that dickhead and all his dickhead friends actually do find it in their hearts to enjoy the entire song, who knows, maybe the cognitive dissonance will help teach them a little tolerance. It's a stretch, I know, but stranger things have happened.

The fact is, regardless, that the Lonely Island isn't just rolling out homosexuality as a punchline; the joke isn't as simple as a couple of straight guys singing about getting married. Tracy Clark-Flory's wrong to assume it is. She's also wrong when she ends her piece with this predictable and thoroughly condescending scold: "To all bro-medians: Please, put a hold on the gay sex jokes until you come up with a really good one."

I've got a better idea. To Tracy Clark-Flory, and really quite a few other self-proclaimed feminist writers over at Salon and elsewhere: How about putting a hold on lecturing legitimately funny people on how to be funny. Trust me, you're not qualified to do it.

"The idea that this can be written out of history, that it was on Cheney and Bush's watch that the biggest domestic attack of our lifetime happened and that somehow that's off the ledger -- we'll just begin the accounting on September 12th, 2011 -- It's so preposterous and it's amazing to me the extent to which in sort of normal public discourse they kind of get away with it."

-- Frank Rich on the Rachel Maddow Show last night, commenting on Dick Cheney's positively laughable criticism of the Obama Administration's performance during the Benghazi attack, which happened on September 11th of last year

Here was Cheney's exact quote, if you haven't seen it yet: "When we were there, on our watch, we were always ready on 9/11, on the anniversary."

For the record, when Cesca brought this up yesterday on the podcast, it was the only time I've ever expressed such utter, audible frustration that it actually made Bob laugh. It's fucking incomprehensible that, as Rich says, these idiots can continue to arrogantly strut and make the ludicrous claim that they "kept us safe" when the worst terrorist attack in our nation's history happened while they were in office. At the risk of violating Godwin's Law, by the logic they consistently use you could easily argue that Hitler was a pretty good guy to the Jews as long as you don't count that nasty Holocaust thing.

This isn't a matter of politics. This is objective fact and an insult to your, my, and all of our intelligence. The idea that we're expected to ignore the original 9/11 when we consider the Bush Administration's record of keeping Americans safe requires a kind of suspension of disbelief on our part -- and chutzpah on theirs -- that normal, non-sociopathic human beings are simply incapable of.

By the way, Maddow's entire takedown of the Republican conspiracy machine on her show last night was one for the ages.

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

I'll be honest: I don't love the new album, but Fall Out Boy remains, believe it or not, one of my favorite bands. They make the kind of shimmering, blistering pop-rock that seems to only come out of Chicago and I'm very much looking forward to seeing them live in the next couple of weeks here in L.A.

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

So, let's go ahead and spin the Wheel of Outrage and see what we land on this time. Oh, look at that -- we're back in familiar territory: The Onion.

I'm sure you all remember the Quvenzhané Wallis tweet-heard-round-the-world during the Oscars; our nation's psychic wounds are just now, finally, starting to heal in the wake of it. Well, now it looks like any chances the almost across-the-board brilliant satire site may have had of making amends and winning back fans within a certain segment of the perpetually indignant liberal intelligentsia have apparently been dashed because of a story it just posted just a little while ago. The target this time: Chris Brown.

Here's the piece in its entirety:

"LOS ANGELES—After revealing yesterday that he had recently split up with longtime girlfriend Rihanna, a heartbroken Chris Brown tearfully told reporters that he always thought the 25-year-old singer was going to be the woman he’d beat to death one day. 'Despite all the ups and downs, I was so sure Rihanna was the one I’d take by the throat one day and fatally assault, and even toward the end I continued to hold out hope that we’d be together until the day she died at my hands from blunt-force trauma,' Brown, 24, said in a radio interview this week, telling DJs he still has abusive feelings for his ex-flame and is hopeful that he might punch her again one day. 'It’s hard knowing that there’s some other guy out there who gets to beat her senseless. In fact, for all I know, there might be someone out there assaulting her right now. And let me tell you, that guy is the luckiest guy in the world.' A saddened Brown added that, should the couple not reconcile, he remains confident that the special someone he was meant to beat to death is still out there for him, and when he finds her, he’ll waste no time in slapping her."

Now you'd think that something this vicious that was obviously intended solely to demean Chris Brown -- an unapologetic woman-beating dickhead who should be in prison right now -- would be embraced by the usual names within the feminist media community. You'd think that, however only if you didn't allow for the fact that those same usual names believe that when it comes to certain predetermined subjects, satire should always be watered down at the risk of very stupid people maybe getting the wrong idea or the already victimized -- literally or figuratively -- being victimized all over again by something they read on a website that deals in smart humor.

And so, compliments of Salon, of course -- who immediately busted out its stock "Did _____ Go Too Far?" headline -- come these breaths of pure fire, designed to hopefully cleanse The Onion, and us, of our cultural sins.

As you can see, there are some thing that can't be the subject of biting satire, no matter who that very nasty bite is taken out of. There are some things that just aren't funny. There are -- eh, fuck it, how many times have I said this now?

I was actually thinking it might be possible to turn this into an entire column, but unfortunately in the time it would take to write one this guy's fame would be long gone. Thankfully, the folks at the Superficial nailed the fact that Charles Ramsey is your new internet hero. While he performed an absolutely heroic feat by helping to rescue three women from the home dungeon of his seemingly normal neighbor in Cleveland -- three women who had been missing for ten years -- what he's already truly becoming famous for is his Gregory Brothers Autotune Treatment-ready interview in the immediate aftermath of the rescue. The one in which he uttered the instantly famous line, "I knew something was wrong when a little, pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway."

Friday, May 03, 2013

I've said this before and I'll say it over and over again: While I love the Rat Pack as a whole, as any red-blooded American man should, I always thought Sammy Davis Jr. to be the true lightning-in-a-bottle talent of the group. Not only was he the most fully-formed entertainer but he had the ability to reach depths of subtlety with his voice that his crooning counterparts could only dream of. For lush, gorgeous, heartbreaking proof of this, just download the album he did with Spanish guitar legend Laurindo Almeida.

I've gotta be honest -- I'm going through a really serious musical drought right now. Everything I listen to on alt radio sounds pretty much the same to me. It could be that I'm finally getting to the age when I'm just not as into what's "new" as I used to be, or it could be that everything really does sound pretty much the same and it's all pretty damn average. Take this year's KROQ Weenie Roast lineup for example: it boasts, along with the usual crop of KROQ-type headliners, Atlas Genius, Awolnation, and Imagine Dragons -- three bands that sound almost exactly alike to me and whom I tend to turn off with a roll of my eyes just about every time they pop up on my car's stereo.

But I guess there are a few bands out there who push out a song or two once in a while that I do kind of find myself enjoying. (Not exactly a ringing endorsement, I know.) The Boxer Rebellion are one of those bands. They've actually been around for more than ten years. and maybe that's why I don't mind getting behind them: they've been quietly toiling away without a ton of alt-rock radio airplay to break them huge.

Here's their new single, anyway. It's called Diamonds.

By the way, I'm out of town on a shoot for the next couple of days, but I should be able to post something minor from the hotel tonight. Until then, Cesca is continuing our week-long paranoid conspiracy take-down over at Banter. And my Ron Paul piece has now been cross-posted at HuffPo -- and the crazies are already coming out of the woodwork in the comment section to defend the great DR. Paul and wail about their disappearing civil rights. So that should keep you busy for a bit.

Wednesday, May 01, 2013

Ron Paul’s Senile Rant About Boston; Fox News and Louie Gohmert Think Obama is With the Terrorists; Sarah Palin for Senate; Another ‘Baby with a Gun’ Shoots and Kills His Sister; New Suspects Arrested in Boston Marathon Bombing; Bill Hader is the Funniest Thing on All of NBC; and much more. Brought to you by Bubble Genius and the BobCesca.com Amazon Link.

"Thankfully, Ron Paul has zero impact on the actual U.S. lawmaking process these days given that he left Congress in a giant poof of indignation and self-pity last November, leaving us all with one final 48-minute-long rant about fascism, fiat money, the erosion of our civil liberties, 'psychopathic authoritarians,' and, of course, liberty! But despite his official departure from the hallowed halls of the institution he claimed to despise, it should have been abundantly clear that he wasn’t simply going to stroll off into the sunset to dodder away his twilight years ranting at telephone poles about the dangers of functional government. Freed from the shackles of decorum, you just knew he was going to rip the gloves off and begin spouting whatever kind of insane horseshit popped into his brain in whichever direction he could. That’s the attitude that led to his first post-office op-ed, subtly titled 'You’re Not Free If You Can’t Secede from an Oppressive Government.' And that’s the attitude that no doubt led to the diatribe he threw together for his friend Lew Rockwell’s website, a piece published yesterday called 'Liberty Was Also Attacked in Boston.' (LIBERTY!)"

Despite the brilliance of taking their name from a Don DeLillo novel, the Airborne Toxic Event have always been kind of hit or miss for me. The stuff I like of theirs I like so much that it's kind of shocking how much I don't really care for some of their other material.

This song, though, definitely falls into the former category.

From their new album, Such Hot Blood, this is a really nice stripped-down live version of The Storm.

I'm a former network news producer and manager, the media editor at The Daily Banter, and a writer who's been featured in The Huffington Post,The New York Observer and The Village Voice. I'm also the author of a book called Dead Star Twilight and the founder of DXM Media, a firm specializing in television production as well as social media strategies and consulting. On top of all that crap, I'm the co-host of "The Bob & Chez Show" podcast and radio show with Bob Cesca. To find out more about me and/or throw money at me, go here. You can contact me at deusexmalcontent@gmail.com or chez@dxmmedia.com. Follow me on Twitter at @chezpazienza.

A special edition of my full-length memoir, Dead Star Twilight, is now available in e-book format on a pay-what-you-want basis. The downloaded is absolutely free; if you choose to pay for it, just click the "donate" button below the download link. Pay whatever you'd like. Pay nothing. It's your choice.

"As a blogger, Chez Pazienza is filled with outrage, passion and insight -- delivered with a distinctive point of view, a wicked sense of humor, and a two-fisted style of prose. In Dead Star Twilight, he turns all these on himself -- and produces a fierce, funny, disturbing, but ultimately uplifting memoir. This is the book A Million Little Pieces dreamed of being."

"Pazienza could be accused of many things... but he could never be faulted for dumbing us down. His glued-shut prose and bawdy metaphors provide a deeply appreciated, and hilarious, literary diversion."

-- Gelf Magazine, "Insolence Is Bliss," June, 2008

"Snarly, not snarky."

-- Andrew Breitbart

"A delusionally subjective, condescending blog, filled with hostile generalizations and a million exaggerations."

-- Paul Krassner, 60s counter-culture icon

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-- Mary Elizabeth Williams, Salon.com

"It is truly sad that someone like Mr. Pazienza has a public forum to express his views. In a more civilized time he would, at best, be confined to an institutio­n for the criminally insane or, at the very least, marginaliz­ed from civilized society."